Outland Models buildings

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keiichi77

keiichi77

I came across buildings by Outland Models (China) on ebay and was wondering if anyone has tried these? They seem to have some nice designs that could work very well on a Japanese layout. One of them looks like a copy of the Kato 4 Floor Office building which makes me wonder if they are all copies of other manufacturers. Some of the designs look original (well to me anyway), they are inexpensive and look ideal customization and bashing to make higher buildings. Any thoughts?

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kvp

kvp

More or less. One of them looks like a long out of production 0 gauge kit that was scanned, shrunk and got most small details deleted. Also one of the N scale buildings looks like a greatly simplified H0 walters kit. I would say they were only inspired by some existing kits, but the models got redesigned to better match the production methods used by the manufacturer.

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JR 500系

JR 500系

I have some of their buildings, but I did not buy them from their ebay store...

They originated from making these buildings for Gundam Dioramas:

Picture from their store in China...

I thought they looked great as N scale buildings so I bought some:

My latest purchase from them

Although they looked great, some minor additions can be done to make them more 'Japanese':

Perfume Girl group ~

I need a better printer...

They have these nice tower carparks that are very common in Japan...

A small warehouse...

They come in small packs unassembled without instructions, but are very easily assembled together without glue and just simply snap fit in. They're evolving their buildings more to make them look more realistic with more details, but they usually come in the same boring grey base colour, but that can be easily solved with some self-painting ~~

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kvp

kvp

The gray buildings seems to be CNC milled, while the smaller, colored items are 3d printed. The quality is lower than shapeways because of the precolored material, but at least the same CNC machine could do it with a printing head that cuts the larger buildings.

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Kabutoni

Kabutoni

The quality is lower than shapeways because of the precolored material.

No, it's becauase it's done with a low quality, low resolution (probably a FDM/FFF) printer. The cheapest option, but also the least satisfactory in outcome. It's more like a glorified and computer controlled glue gun, rather than a sophisticated printer for these resolutions.

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cteno4

cteno4

interesting. funny they have different things with the us store vs canadian vs china. many things in the canada store ship from the us but are not in the ebay.com store! same building with bid and buy it now at the same price.

the bigger buildings do look to be CNC with all the rounded corners in the windows. many do look like copies of kato and tomix with a few mods. buildings do look similar, but these are a bit too at times!

Picked a few up to play with.

oh for a laser cutter to produce buildings like this!

jeff

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kvp

kvp

The items seem to be in china with delivery within a month. The german (european) buy it now price with free shipping equals with the starting bid + ~2 usd shipping. This is a good trick to get them listed as both cheap, cheap to ship, free shipping and lowest price+shipping.

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JR 500系

JR 500系

1) The buildings are commonly in a single grey base colour, but they have some painted ones, but will costs a little more expensive. Nonetheless, still cheaper for the size of a skyscraper

2) The buildings are very slightly 'smaller' in size if compared with Kato/ Tomix ones. Not very noticeable, but they are scaled to a scale of 1/144 for Gundam models. They still look good as background fillers

3) The windows are there, but they are empty, i.e. no glass or coverings, just empty holes

4) I don't like the patio they always include in some of their buildings, as Japanese buildings rarely have much patio unless hotels/ restaurants... But they can be easily removed or simply do not fit them on.

5) The material is quite thick, so I see a potential for interior lighting. Let me try some out to see the effects and will post them here.

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kvp

kvp

Afaik 1/144 is larger than 1/150, not smaller. The painted and cnc-d buildings are made from prepainted styrene sheets. This is a common way to make nicer door signs in offices. Any surface that is cut will reveal the color of the base material. For clear windows, any smooth clear plastic packaging material or projector sheet can be used. They can be cut to the size of the wall with scissors.

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cteno4

cteno4

Yeah the acetate sheets from Tomix and kato building boxes works well for glass! Just use a general plastic cement, not ACC as the acc fumes will fog the clear acetate for a good distance around the drop of glue and sometimes does not really show up for a while!

The 4% increase to the 1/144 is rarely noticed in a situation like this. Depending on how soft the stryene mix they used I'll give a whirl at cleaning out the rounded window corners. Nice to have some different shaped buildings. I got the larger ones that look similar to the old greenmax high rises.

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JamesTu

JamesTu

I have used both the ready coloured and the unpainted buildings in this range. They are not as detailed as other manufacturers, but to me, that was part of the fun. The unpainted buildings I painted using Valspar masonry paint which gave them a concrete look and texture. I used their 500 ml sample pots which can be mixed to any shade as this paint was cheap.

The extra Japanese decorations were either left over from other Japanese kits, or downloaded from the internet.

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cteno4

cteno4

hey sounds great! Great if you could post some Picts, great to see what you did. I'm intregued with the masonary paint! Sounds like a good building paint. Did you brush or spray? The sample pots are great to use like that. I use the craft acrylics a lot and the flat ones can be thinned and sprayed and give that flat concrete look as well.

i now have most of the range of these buildings I've picked up in the last year or so on ebay. Popped a few together and as you say they are not a s detailed but with some additions they can look great and all a lot of variety! Bit more of a challenge to light but some plastic L stock in the corners and internal paint can help stop that, just a lot more interior prep work to do then if you want to light them.